Five Alive

For some reason when I thought of the title for today’s blog I was thinking about a fruit juice that I think was called the same name because it had five different fruits that contributed to the juice. I’m not sure if it’s still around or if it’s been taken off the market. It would be a pity if it has ... only for the purposes of this blog, not because I like it or anything. Those juice combinations didn’t always work out for the best and if my taste bud memory serves me faithfully that particular juice concoction wasn’t among me best.

All of which provides an insightful, though completely irrelevant set-up for today’s blog celebrating the fifth birthday of my firstborn child Deborah Dryden. I’m not sure if I’ve written that much about my experiences on being a father. I don’t think I have which is interesting when a significant part of my life and evident vocation is to be a father to my children. As me wife currently struggles and hobbles and waddles with our third child steadily developing in her tummy it is an apt time to reflect on the first one out of our relationship.

I didn’t prepare myself that much for marriage and even less for parenthood. I didn’t read up on it that voraciously. I didn’t do the usual sit down with the significant elders in my life who could pass on words of wisdom. Indeed the season before the firstborn’s appearance was a traumatic one for me and the marital relationship. So even if I did make the time to have those reads and chats I would not have had the emotional capacity to take it on. Such as it is then, at the most precious time in a man’s life when he beholds the miracle of childbirth I was not fully with it to appreciate it. No tears rolling down me eyes at the sight of this fluid covered baby.

Thankfully all that has changed significantly over those five years and whenever I look at Deborah now, I know the grace of God is real. Even whilst I was writing yesterday’s blog I was thinking about grace and how it works very much in the parental analogy. In a real way that child has done nothing to deserve the fuss made over her. She hasn’t worked for it, she hasn’t put in her hours, she hasn’t done anything and yet she is the beneficiary of being fed, clothed, catered for physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually by doting parents who evidently love to do it.

Therein is the rub – the bond is love. It’s not based on works done, it’s based on love. That is exactly how I often think it works with my relationship with my heavenly Father. He doesn’t love me for the things I do, He loves me because He is love and thus is the essence of loving out of His character. Thus to a large extent my actions and behaviour does not alter His character. Of course that doesn’t mean I then just stay in baby mode and just be a beneficiary taking it all in and only responding by crying when I’m hungry and belching when I’m finished with the food. The act of gratitude shows my active engagement in the grace exchange.

At five, though, Deborah has developed a number of attributes and characteristics that makes her quite a different being than the one that emerged from the womb of her mother all those years ago. Now she is a most verbose little girl quick to point out when something is not fair as well as give ongoing commentary on the many aspects of her busy life. Albeit a soft girl, she is very wily and knows what note to play at a given time. She is also a courteous girl, which delights me so. I do enjoy some of her verbal ramblings and her general conduct makes me pleased. Beyond that though, I still look at this now five year old girl and thank God for her. She is amazing and to know the circumstances in which she popped out and how that has not doused any sense of joy in her makes my heart glad. Seeing the creative developments flourishing in her and noting her God-given special characteristics makes it ever so exciting to be her dad.

So as five comes and goes today and as she milks being the centre of attention my heart’s desire is that she will still bear in mind that the real centre of attention is her heavenly Father who has given her so much good in her life. My prayer is likewise that her mother and father will also grow in being examples of that life of gratitude in the light of God’s grace, so that she will have an idea where to go as her own spiritual journey develops.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd

When God Says Lets Reason

I am a sinner. When AA was set up and started encouraging its members to introduce themselves by acknowledging the particular addiction from which they suffered, they were following a confessional tradition that has spanned the ages. I’m not arrogant enough to believe that Christians started it and initiated it and have a patent on it, but it is a crucial part of the confessional element of the faith. The first step of humility is this acknowledgement. Knowing who you are in the eyes of God begins with knowing who you are in the reflection of His holiness and purity and that is way off the mark ... or a sinner as the bible helpfully defines it.

Now you’ll notice that I never started this segment off with I was a sinner. Neither did I allude to being a former sinner. I quite clearly and deliberately stated that I am a sinner. It is not something I revel in, but something that keeps me ever in mind of the fact that I am in need of a Saviour, Redeemer and Guide. A Saviour to rescue me from my sinful nature, a Redeemer to take me from the sinful state to the state where I truly belong and a Guide to draw me ever closer to the source of my existence who helps me realise who I was always created to be.

These things I am in need to be mindful of constantly because it is just my way to slip out of that and get ahead of myself. It is just my way to consider myself as sorted and alright where others have not reached that point of spiritual and intellectual clarity and enlightenment. I catch myself in this state whenever I’m being critical of someone else whether my children, my siblings, my wife, my friends or the other vast cast of characters that comes in my life however fleetingly and for whatever reason. There I am pontificating even albeit internally on just how misguided and ignorant the person in question is from that which is true and how far they have missed the mark. Only to be graciously reminded of how I have been in that position myself and how my natural disposition would keep me there were it not for the love of God.

That’s why I love being a Christian. That dose of humility that you need to keep going and that realisation that it comes from a loving God whose mercy is without end saves us from the extremes of self-pity and despair as well as complacency and self-reliance. I love being a follower of Christ, because I’m invited into a relationship where my Creator seeks me out to lead me back to Him and to straighten me out and in that place I realise how good it is to love because you’ve been loved and how then spiritually it is possible to love without strings attached. Not easy, I said, but possible.

So I’m always perturbed when I read in the Bible the first chapter of the book of Isaiah and how the prophet outlines the charge against Judah for the first 15 verses. I’m perturbed because the allegations strikes every part of a nation’s life – political, economic, social as well as religious and spiritual. Especially the indictment of the religious hypocrisy that rampant throughout the country that made the people of Judah believe they could carry on with their rituals whilst beyond that their relationships were a mess. Now saying relationships are a mess is today translated as cultural breakdown, anti-social behaviour and the kind of circumstances that leads to pensioners bemoaning the fact that whereas back in the day you could leave your front door open, now you need an alarm, CCTV and several locks to keep you safe.

What’s worse about all this is that the charge that God makes in this chapter is against His own people. Not to strangers, not to people who don’t know, but those who have been engrafted in a relationship with Him by his saving power as seen in the Exodus. As seen in repeated episodes of His grace in action as time after time the spiritual adultery, deceit and outright rebellion has always been followed by His return to help whenever they call on Him.

To have similar complaints about the moral decay of countries like America and Britain actually neglects the fact that although there was the concept of Christendom these countries were never in the truest sense Christian – after all no such nation-state was ever due to arise since Jesus ascended. Instead God’s people would be a people out of a people who would come from all people and were not a people but became the people that Christ will return for as His Bride.

In the meantime concepts of a ‘Christian’ country have been misleading, whilst the called out people have slumbered on their ill-gotten political and social influence that has compromised their witness to the world of being called out of sin to be like their Saviour, Redeemer and Guide. So the very same charge that God levels at the people of Judah can often be levelled at the called out people. We make a song and dance of the ritual of church-stuff but the quality of our real relationships is shambolic to be a shame and bring disrepute to the name of our Saviour, Redeemer and Guide. This all comes because of a lack of recognition of that first step of humility. Remembering that first step and that first encounter with the amazing grace and yet startling holiness of God should convict us of the need to remain ever close to the One who has saved, redeemed and guided us.

I don’t say that in accusation to people out there. I say that because I get perturbed when I then read Isaiah 1:18-20.

Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Now why get perturbed at that, you may ask, surely it’s the good news of a God giving a second chance. Well the reason I get perturbed is because here we see that whenever God says let us reason it is not to sit and converse over things as equals, it’s actually to have the riot act read to us and giving a severe warning that unless we do what was always designed for us for our good then there are dire consequences. Oh come on, don’t be so pessimistic, Chris, I hear you remark. Yet I’m an optimistic guy by nature – in the context of where this text goes and what happens to the people, God’s request for reasoning is almost a last saloon time for His people. Reasoning with God is always a time for stiff reminder of how this walk is meant to go and how it’s not about self-pity or self-reliance, but about being like the publican who went away justified because his prayerful approach was to ask God for mercy.

That posture of the contrite spirit and broken heart doesn’t lead to miserable looking people forever condemning themselves for sinning yet again. On the contrary, it leads to compassionate, joyful, thankful people only to aware of being sinners saved by grace and so only too ready to help out wherever possible, but never compromising the call with which they have been called by Christ.

(It’s rather apt that I should be inspired to write this piece towards the end of the year as it bookends nicely with this piece at the beginning of the year about what we are like and why that should determine how we live.)

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Foretaste

I read and hear people often talk about heaven and what it would like to be in heaven and how they would like to experience heaven on earth. I’ve found these musings intriguing from a background that always left heaven for where God is and where we’ll never go as I’ve read me bible. In any case the paradise picture that they all endeavour to paint is very much one based on what our imagination can put together from current experiences and the level to which it is liberated to explore all possibilities. For some heaven is about having all your pleasures given to you and sensual overload of that which is pleasing to you. I don’t have a problem with utopian thinking indeed I reckon its only limitation is that it doesn’t quite match the vision of eternity with God. That’s the only problem.

Still, I was doing a reading onto tape for my dear friend, Ray. First one I’ve done and I really enjoyed it, I’d want to do more of those if the opportunity arose. The book was Alex Robertson’s Manifesto for a Revolution: The Kingdom of God on Earth. The nature of the recording challenged me to at least retain some of the points made by the author as I summarised what was going on from tape to tape. That beat the way I usually read and also helped me to grapple with some of the issues better. Among other things mentioned in the book is how things like healings that we see in our day are actually foretastes of that great kingdom to come when Jesus’ millennial reign ends and He passes it onto His Father who wipes all tears from our eyes and removes sickness, suffering, pain, etc.

I like the concept of foretastes. I see them in scripture, littered in the ministry of Jesus and the apostles. They are identified in church history and for those privileged enough they even pop up in our lives. Those glimpses of the glory ahead when Dad says enough is enough to this decaying, rusty old world and ushers in a new heaven and new earth so He can be with His people and His people can eternally be in Him.

At this difficult time in my life it is often a source of great encouragement to get triggers to those foretastes that I’ve read, heard, seen and especially experienced in my brief time on the planet. Those triggers and those foretastes have not happened in the stereotypical places of church services, but often in the quite amazing places – one happened whilst shopping in Tescos, can you believe it? God even shows a glimpse of His glory in Tescos!

Like last night watching Law Abiding Citizen and the consciousness of the three major forces that opposes the disciple of Christ – Satan, the World and the Flesh (aka me). How the world’s system is so inherently corrupt that the only option is to actually subscribe to a kingdom that is not of this world and which will one day completely overwhelm all worldly kingdoms. It makes sense not to try and oppose the system or even spend too much time investing it, but to actually focus on living for the kingdom come that One before ushered into our hearts by Calvary, the empty tomb and Pentecost.

The whole point though is of foretaste and the triggers thereof, and as you know I have to slum it using the wife’s laptop, which sucks for me who cannot be doing with all this cutey-cute small keys and small keyboard business. Anyhow it’s been a while since I’ve been able to watch YouTube stuff, and I had the song Golden Lady in me head and looked for covers of it especially looking for Frank McComb’s version, which is out of sight.

Then I came across this cover. I never heard the guy before in my life. Never heard of him, etc. I listened to the version and was suitably impressed by the quality and their own arrangement of the song which put another stamp on a beautiful song, adding another dimension of brilliance on a Wonder creation that Stevie must be really chuffed about. Then after listening to the song I took the time to watch the video itself and saw musical harmony interspersed with genuine enjoyment of the musically act and the unity involved in both and the mutual submission of sax to vocalist and vice-versa before trying a riff together.

That gave me a foretaste of a time without bickering, division, antagonism, but mutual submission, harmony in praise of our glorious Father and peoples of all ethnicities gathered round to sing those songs in a way that reminds me of this musical effort. One day. One day. And until then God grants me the privilege of being a member of the Body of Christ and in the small ways and relationships with brothers and sisters of Christ I get to play a part in reflecting that quality to a world watching on to see what the alternative looks like.

Foretastes – I love them. I would love to experience more and get others too share in it as well. This is not all there is to life, but there is something that we get glorious glimpses of now even now whilst we wait and work until the Master comes. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
dmcd

A Jacket - A Prophecy

I looked at the jacket. It had been worn for years, it was fraying on the shoulder and there were holes apparent everywhere on it. It was just about wearable but it was obviously on its last legs. If it were an animal it would be mercifully put down.

There was an evident need for something new to cover in a way suitable for the season ahead. The next step would see changes made, that process would necessarily be hard as letting go of something that has served for so long is hard to let go. Yet it was clear that the old has past and it was time for the new to come.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Prayer - Taking A Load Off

It’s another Sabbath evening. These are precious, precious times. Times to physically, mentally and spiritually unwind. The rest offered on this day is one in which I am refreshed in the presence of God. It’s as though as I relax further I’m able to give him all the week’s stuff and He in return gives me peace of mind and rest. Were you to be made aware of the stuff that’s been on the menu of my life this week, this is a most gratifying and relieving activity in which to engage.

I did have it mind to write on another subject this evening, but just before I got to blogging I did the evening devotion with the girls. Sometimes I read from their Children’s Bible, sometimes we watch some bible cartoons or sometimes I’ll just make up a story on the spot. This evening I chose the latter. As I held both close to me it gave me a chance to meditate and ponder with them in some quiet. As I did so I reflected on the power of prayer and made up a simple story on the lines of how essential prayer is in every walk of life in whatever we’re doing.

We obviously prayed to end the session and on tucking the girls to bed a new song entered the consciousness. By new I mean old, but it was new in my head at the time after another song had dominated for a fair while as you’ll see in a later post.

The first song that popped in me head was Tis The Blessed Hour of Prayer, the second was Sweet Hour of Prayer then of course the third was Did You Think To Pray. Sometimes being so far from home, my parents and the old way of living and doing church I forget some of the old favourites that my dad loved singing to himself. These three compliment each other very well and as you look at the lyrics you notice them really selling the virtues of taking the time to pray whether it’s when your life is dark and dreary or as a balm when you’re weary or even as one on whom we can cast every care.

It is so reassuring to know that God offers all of this through prayer. So once more I salute my parents and my old church for embedding these songs into me so that even now as I look to solve some complex and deep issues, and also enjoy the rest made for man, I am reminded that prayer is the route through which all that I need can be found. In the light of that conversation the rest is made even sweeter, the joy is even richer, the peace is even greater as I can engage as friend to friend as well as son to Father.

So enjoy these reminders (even one modern updating) and remember you can take a load off through prayer – talk, He’s listening, listen, He’s talk, stop He’s embracing you and giving comfort even in the hardest times and whatever your life situation He is right there to live it with you.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Frustration and Melancholy

I’m quite clear that not all the blog entries on this blog are great. Maybe not even good. Perhaps there are one or two that would be considered sub-standard, not really all that interesting or missing something somewhere. What keeps me blogging though is the discipline of getting the thing done from my head and/or my heart and put it out and motivate further thoughts for future blogs or at least keep the rhythm of thinking to write going. Sometimes it inspires me to consider day to day issues and connect to others and see where it goes.

Today for example two streams of thought ran through the day almost concurrently but one flow was in greater ebb at the beginning of the day than the end, and the other was rising towards the end of the day although had connections to the beginning.

This morning I was frustrated. I didn’t help it. I rather wallowed in it and were it not for the book I was reading on my way to work and subsequent distractions of work and the like, I would have reasoned myself into self-pity and a justified morose attitude. I flung myself in a huff to myself at the sense of injustice that caused the source of frustration. Sadly for the frustration, however, then I got a good word that was actually linked to something that nagged me about the frustration.

The good word was that frustration is an expression of anger. As I pondered on that further and the negative connotations of that it began to make sense. After all it is not in my experience that frustration has been associated with godly character and conduct. Usual bed-fellows of frustration include annoyance, irritation, impatience and pent up anger as well as that sense of injustice.

Digging further behind the reasons for frustration I also saw that frustration is something that comes along when a much desired outcome has been postponed – I can’t have something perhaps, or there’s been an issue that prevents some situation from taking place. Either way, my sense of control and passion to have things my way has been thwarted and that is not to the liking of my ego. Now I can mask it, perhaps divert energies elsewhere, but it still resides in my system unless it is resolved properly and I get over it, or I do something I regret. As far as I’m aware today I didn’t do something I regret, but that was only because of that good word that reminded me of where frustration really comes from.

What’s worse, though, is that there is something about frustration that makes a claim on who the most important person in my life is. I can hardly claim to love Jesus wholeheartedly when my reaction to plans thwarted is to throw my dummies away, get upset and refuse to co-operate with life as I should. That is a clear contradiction. That is to say frustration is an obstacle to real worship of God and a healthy relationship with Him. Obstacles to healthy relationship with God are a problem.

By deduction then, frustration is not really a God thing. After all, how can God get frustrated when He knows His plans will work out anyway? Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure God expresses feelings throughout scripture – that’s clear. For all of that, however, there is an element in which He knows His plans are never thwarted and the place of frustration is never needed if full confident faith is placed in Him like a child entrusts herself to her father. So frustration at times can be an expression of missing the focus of faith.

Of course this kind of learning can be on the surface of the mind without being embedded in the heart and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunities to learn this and allow the Spirit to embed it deep into my persona as my place of trust for Him.

Oh and about the melancholy. On this score I heartily approve of seasons in life where melancholy is present. I don’t condone a life lived in melancholy, I don’t even see the value of extending a season of melancholy beyond its time, but I do believe that melancholy should be digested from time to time. I find melancholy can often be a good way of reflecting and contemplating how changes in life necessarily upsets the previously known order of things and can often require the departure of familiar friends – even if those friends are regular routines and habits.

Departures and goodbyes should be treated seriously, just as there should be joy and thanksgiving for whatever benefits have been received, so there should be that sense of loss that will happen as a result of the departure. That’s why we don’t dwell on melancholy we don’t want to get things out of perspective, but it’s exactly the desire to get things in perspective that should allow us to spend some time walking through with God in the attic of past things.

And on that note I must extend thanks for your time In reading these jaunts, it’s been a pleasure blogging for you.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Having A Laugh

Part two of Playing Out Of Position will be published tomorrow.

In the meantime I just wanted to share this from something I read today.

This article made me laugh. A legitimate report on the BBC with the National Secular Society are complaining that staff in faith schools have to support the faith of the school! Whatever next? Doctors may actually be required to have some desire to see the health and welfare of their patients?! Lawyers may actually be required to have some knowledge of the law?!

Good grief, this epidemic could actually spread and people might actually be required to care and have some affiliation to the occupation in which they work. That’s just scandalous. I sincerely hope the government, who I hope aren’t all politicians, takes this matter seriously and challenges this business of people in faith schools actually needing to support the faith of the school. It’s just preposterous.

Oh and heaven forfend that we should discriminate, oh dear me, no. Discriminate, that’s just wrong, even if we do it every day on very good grounds like I want a taxi driver who can actually drive, I won’t accept one who can’t. I think the National Secular Society should invest some time into that as well, so as to make this world a safer place to live in where no one has to believe in anything and can do anything they like.

Thank God for the National Secular Society.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Power and Freedom

So I’m reading about Michael Foot as you know and it’s just one of a number of books of a political flavour. A good question to ask is what is it with all the politics? I find it interesting that some cultural traditions have it that around the dinner table or in the home two subjects are not discussed, religion and politics. Two of the most important issues of life are not to be discussed over the most intimate setting of family. Interesting, that. We never had that rule at home because politics wasn’t talked about anyway. Dad wasn’t one to talk about politics, because it never appeared to bother him. I think he voted, but he never made a big deal of it. Stuff would happen and he wouldn’t comment on it. Likewise my mother, vociferous on issues as she was, never made that much of a big deal about politics. I got into it through my interest in books.

This is not a bit about how I love politics. It is a bit, however, about how politics is about power and the problem we have with power. The saying power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely is interesting because no one ever has absolute power, but the desire for power continues to corrupt everyone. When we were younger so much younger than today and perhaps never needed anybody’s help in anyway there was that eager excitement about being an adult. There was something exciting about being able to do whatever we wanted and to practice all the adult stuff that we looked at – expressions of the will, expressions of power to do whatever it is we wanted to do without recourse to restrictive parental … power. The power would be ours. Don’t get me wrong, nothing wrong with wanting to grow up and stuff, but the allure wasn’t responsibility – too much hard work – the allure was that little bit of power.

The problem then comes in with how that power is meant to be exercised and how it’s actually exercised. Whatever the culture, whatever the philosophy there is something running in it that promises some level of control and power. You don’t have to be religious to buy into it, the thing works through family, sports and is blatant in the business world and other areas of the world of work. We tolerate restrictions to power only in as much as it allows us to express that power for self-satisfaction elsewhere. So far, apparently nothing wrong with that. Then we meet Jesus and discover there’s plenty wrong with that. Plenty in the sense that it’s all for the glory of man, whereas doing things for another’s glory would require giving up that power, leaving it to be used by someone else for their glory. Almost as if we revert back to that position where we aspire to something we would never experience.

The funny thing about it is, that in giving up all that we desired so much, it is in the light of this that real freedom is experienced. It is only when the quest for power and control is yielded to a desire to find love from its true Source that all that has ever been desired is made possible.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Until Your Love Broke Through

Today I could not locate the latest in the Maurice Barratt series on the Sermon on the Mount that I am reading, so I elected to continue reading the Michael Foot biography by Kenneth O. Morgan.

I have been reading it I believe for over a week now and it is proving to be a fascinating insight into the man. It is not exhilaratingly excellent, but it makes for compelling reading and getting to understand not just the man, but the context in which he played his role in history as well as Morgan’s own assessment of those factors and episodes.

As I made the enjoyable walk from the school to the COG/YMCA office where I work, I read further on the era in which Foot supported Aneurin Bevan in his brief spotlighted period as a significant figure in the Labour movement. It was virtually the rise and fall of Bevan as a political heavyweight and how his decisions were to be assessed in its effect on the Labour party as well as the direction of socialism as a whole.

It was good reading how in actuality socialism has different flavours from the working class flavour, to the middle class flavour to the quasi-Communist flavour and the near-right flavours that didn’t make too much of an issue about certain socio-economic demands and assumptions that the left made. I was fascinated by Foot’s role predominantly as a writer in supporting the values of whatever there was to Bevanism. (Morgan states that the problem was that there was hardly any doctrinal substance to this movement and they were usurped in actually shaping Labour’s vision of socialism by the side nearer the right of the party like Gaitskell and Crosland.)

All this is the set-up for what then happened as another epiphany moment in the life of Christopher Dryden. One aspect of the book was talking about Foot’s stance to trade unions in the early 1950’s particularly the leadership of the unions. Morgan depicts Foot as someone who didn’t really have much truck for them at the time and it took relationships later on to change his perspective. What got me thinking on a different stream was how Morgan describes the roles of these relationships with Frank Cousins and Jack Jones as opening the eyes of Foot.

It got me thinking about how certain episodes in life really do open your eyes to reality. It got me especially thinking of the current circumstance that we as a family find ourselves in where in essence for our own health and safety we need to make some very tough decisions.

It related well with the hints that had been dropped over the last year or two. In particular it reminded me of the Keith Green song Your Love Broke Through, especially the lyrics of the chorus

Like waking up from the longest dream,

How real it seemed,

Until your love broke through,

I was lost in a fantasy,

That blinded me,

Until your love broke through.

Those are profound lyrics of the power of revelation. It doesn’t just show you what is really there, it also says, to an extent, that what you thought was there, and believed passionately was reality was actually an illusion – a convincing, blinding illusion. The journey of faith on which I am travelling has been littered with incidents and episodes that bear this sentiment out. The key here as well is what makes the difference, what wakes me out of the reverie, what shakes me out of the fantasy – true, honest, pure love.

This is not a romantic, gooey version of the word full of soft settings and pleasant feelings. This is the love that goes out into the fields, mountains and valleys searching for the one lost sheep. This is the love that sends an only Son to die for the enemies. This is the love that spares no effort in doing what it takes to lift the blindness and let eyes see what the reality is. This is tough but comforting love. This is liberating but confounding love. This love is not easily digested in one sitting. This love is not easy to understand in one reading. This love is constantly unveiling and revealing, constantly exposing and highlighting, constantly leading and directing, constantly assuring and reassuring.

This love is seen in glimpses in the harsh realities of life where we get to know who our real friends are when the chips are down. This love is seen in the patient, caring, compassionate approach to us in failure and rejection. This love is heard in the words of this very real experience not just for Keith but for others, like me. This love is smelt, felt, heard, seen, tasted and experienced as much in times of great joy as in times of great sadness. This love, funnily enough, is exactly the love that is outlined in the Sermon on the Mount (almost as though God can talk about the Sermon on the Mount through the life of Michael Foot – how creative is that!).

This amazing agape love sustains me in the challenges of life and sees me maintaining hope even if the structures on which I relied on in time past are removed slowly or harshly. This love is centred primarily on knowing God better and then, in the light of that, recognising who I am and what I am meant to do.

I am grateful that His love broke through and continues to break through in my life, and it remains my life’s prayer as well as my life’s journey to share the experience and witness it in the lives of others open to this love breaking through.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Confessional Community - In The Bigger Picture

You’re aware that I’ve talked before about confessional community (there was this one, then that one before the other one). It is something that I desperately desire and there have been experiences where I’ve caught a glimpse of what that life might look like. This evening I had the chance to talk with a dear friend of mine about how some of our church experiences actually prevent that level of confession and transparency to take place and how some of the leadership junk we take on board further alienates us from getting the help we so need when the way of Christ actually promoted brotherhood.

I love that honesty and vulnerability not just to satiate the therapeutic side of me, but to really deal with what it will take for Christ to be formed in me. That is a love for someone else to enter their hurt and pain on the understanding that it likewise leaves you open to someone else entering your hurt and pain in a bid for presence and love to help heal that hurt and pain however long it takes.

Today was another one of those highly compressed, potentially mega stressed scenarios. It didn’t all work in my favour and I was frustrated at times and it was so easy to get absorbed in my own problems to the neglect of others. God as ever though stopped that self-indulgent rubbish almost immediately. Another friend of mine came to see me today right in the middle of all the busyness and shared with me how his marriage is on the rocks and he’s currently separated from his wife.

This guy is a Christian. This is a man who has shown a tremendous servant heart in helping others not the least of whom is me. Here is a guy who I know makes every endeavour to follow the path that God has set for him. Yet here he is facing such a heart-rending and painful period. Not only that, rather than hide it in religiosity and busyness, he’s choosing to share the issue with a brother, who himself in going through the wringer albeit in another area of life.

So what are we supposed to do just keep it to ourselves, just muddle through on our own? No. Are we meant to get into a group huddle and sob over our issues as if we’re a self-help group? That’s not what fellowship is about – that’s not what confessional community promotes. Bearing each other’s burdens, confessing our faults one with another is submitting ourselves to each other and to Christ in that effort to leave ourselves open to His mercy and slowly but surely having our characters conformed after His own.

That at times requires challenging each other to holiness as well as compassionately walking with brethren through some very difficult decisions.

I am glad that following Jesus is not about getting the right answers, or having things work out as we would like them. I am glad that following Jesus takes us through valleys as well as mountaintop experiences. I am glad that following Jesus is just as much about living in my weakness and pain as it is about rejoicing in victories.

This song has ministered to me in terms of what our loving Father does and how our anguished cry to Him in those dark nights of the soul has to be for our precious Lord to take our hand and lead us home. Remember my friend in your prayers. Remember me in your prayers as well, so that this amazing love that we experience every day may swell our hearts with a desire for His presence and a passion to see the broken-hearted healed by sharing this amazing love.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd